


magic in the air

by antarcticas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Badass Katara (Avatar), Charms Class (Harry Potter), Dark Magic, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fire, Minor Sokka/Suki, Potions, Suspicions, Zutara, i'm sorry i had to write this, iroh teaches divination of course, lessons about what's good and bad, strange magic things happening, zuko can't decide if he's good or not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25351900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/pseuds/antarcticas
Summary: Potions prodigy Katara thought her fifth year would be easy enough, but the suspicious new Durmstrang transfer has her head spinning. If only anyone else could see through him.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 35





	1. our abilities

“What took you so long?” Suki asks as she crawls up into Sokka’s lap, and Katara groans at the sight and grabs a slice of toast before pulling out one of the potions books she’d grabbed out of the Restricted Section two days prior on Professor Pakku’s authority.

“I slept in,” she admits, and it takes Sokka’s sleepy eyes just seconds to light up and point at her with a crazed look.

“Guess Ms. Perfect isn’t that perfect after all!” he shouts, and Suki lightly slaps him. Katara looks at him pointedly and reaches out for the butter he’s hoarded next to his plate piled high with bacon. 

“I was doing research for my potions project while you just like to sleep as much as humanly possible. We’re not the same.”

He sighs and digs back into his breakfast and Suki moves off of him to grab some porridge for herself. “How’s that going, by the way? Our O.W.L. year was terrifying enough, I can’t imagine piling a whole special project on top of that. Pakku must love you. Is he even giving you extra credit?”

“No, but it’s fine. I love the reading anyways —”

“You’re a  _ nerd,”  _ Sokka chokes out around a mouth of meat, ignoring the reproachful look his girlfriend gives him. “I swear, you’re such a Ravenclaw . . .”

“Better a nerd than a Quidditch freak,” Katara snarks back, but he’s already immersed himself into his food. “I’m actually  _ working  _ to become a Healer —”

“I’ll be a fine Auror!”

“You’d have to actually pass your Potions N.E.W.T for that to happen.”

Suki snorts. “She’s got you there.”

“You’re both so  _ mean  _ to me,” Sokka cries, and Katara just shakes her head and ignores him before immersing herself back into the book. If she changes the amount of pig’s eye in the fourth stage of her potion she might be able to speed up the skin regrowth for the later stages of the healing process. Hopefully one of her newer ideas will work; one of them  _ has  _ to. She blew up part of the lab the last time she’d tried to experiment. Pig’s eye shouldn’t throw off the potion’s balance that much, but she’ll stay after class to check to see if Professor Pakku sees any errors with her calculations. 

She’s drafting out the ratio of newt tongues to toadstools when a small presence moves into the seat next to her, and she looks up with a small smile. “How are you guys doing?”

Aang and Toph are third-years and quite a bit younger than the other three at the table, but Katara’s always been rather friendly and they’d latched onto each other quickly. Sokka thinks that the thirteen-year-old just has a crush on her — and that’s why he tries to spend time with a squad of Gryffindors rather than sticking to his ‘puffs — but she doesn’t like to think about that.  He’s closer to Toph, anyway, though she’s not quite sure how his lighthearted personality and the other girl’s love of jinxes truly align.

Toph’s milky eyes narrow and she takes up two of the seats across from Katara. “My lovely parents came by to check on me again,” she sighs. “Twinkletoes just spent time with our beloved headmaster, though, so he probably has something to tell you.”

Sokka’s finished his first plate and looks up while he tries to reach for the bacon again, only for Suki to shove it away from him. “Nuh-uh, you’re not going to throw that all up on the pitch —”

He groans but acquiesces, and they all look away as he burps except for Aang, who looks unaffected as ever. “Headmaster Gyatso told me that we’re getting transfers!”

Aang’s backstory is ostensibly sad but he doesn’t seem to realize it; he’d been adopted by the Headmaster-slash-Charms professor when he was a few years old and had built out his life in Hogwarts, spending his time with the other staff and the teenagers who constantly enter and leave the school’s halls. It's said that he’s a prodigy, that his time running through Hogwarts as a child connected him intrinsically to the walls of the castle, but those are just stories. He’s a kid. 

“In the middle of the year?” Katara asks. That’s odd.

“They’re from Durmstrang! Their father was one of the leaders of that conspiracy — you know, the one to take over the Ministry and MACUSA — but he’s in prison now so they got moved here!”

Sokka blanches. “The New Phoenix Order? That’s a little terrifying.”

“Dark magic,” Katara adds to the bottom of that. “That doesn’t sound promising at all, Aang. It’s a little scary to have people from a dark conspiracy coming over here . . .”

“Oh, come on! It was their father, not them, and we should be nice to them. Everyone is going to hate them anyway.”

“Yes, for good reason,” she reminds him. “Dark magic is  _ bad,  _ you know. It’s what killed our mother.”

It’s a little bit easier for that to roll off her tongue now, less hard to say. Sokka reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. 

“But they’re not evil just because their father was —”

_ “Durmstrang,”  _ Katara refutes pointedly, and Suki nods in agreement. 

“Why are you all so close minded? They’re just kids . . .”

“I don’t know, Aang,” Toph says. With a side glance it’s clear that the petite girl is on her fourth crumpet. Her stomach is bottomless. “When are they going to be sorted?”

“Dinner, I guess,” he mumbles out, giving them all a cranky look. “And I expect you to be nice to them!”

“Fine,” Sokka says after a moment of silence before switching the topic of conversation back to quidditch. Suki and Toph, one the team’s youngest Beaters, hang onto his words while Aang reaches out to put a hand on Katara’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything about your mom, I just . . . everyone can change, you know, even Durmstrang kids. Please give them a chance?”

She shrugs him off after giving him a quick nod and goes back to perusing the book. 

  
  


* * *

As Yue had helpfully pointed out during their free period, in all of her Ravenclaw glory, pig’s eye in the fourth step of her potion would create pressure with the essence of boomslang, so she had to scrap that thought. She’s lugged yet another book to dinner. The room is more formal than usual tonight, the lights dimmed and the houses all split up by year. She avoids her brother and his girlfriend, who are much too prone to public affection, to slide in next to Haru and Jin, who both raise their eyes up at the tome.

Jin’s bubbly as usual and she gives Katara a large smile. They’re roommates so she sees the girl often enough, and they’re friends in the sort of way that friendships develop when you live together for a few years. They’re not as close as she’ll ever be with Sokka and Suki or Yue and Ty Lee. Haru smirks at her. “You sure you want to study right now? They’re sorting the transfers, it’ll be interesting.”

“There are two of them!” Jin pipes up. “A fifth year and a seventh year, so it’s rather late for a transfer. I don’t really know why they just didn’t stay at Durmstrang.”

“Where do you think they’ll be sorted?” Haru asks.

Katara puts down her book into her bag and reaches across for the prunes that Sokka’s handing to her. He knows she loves them. “Anything besides Hufflepuff.”

“You think they could be in Gryffindor?”

“Anyone can be in Gryffindor,” she sighs. “My gut instinct is Slytherin though.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Jin says. “Coming out of a war like that — probably ambitious. You know we’ve got a new Divination professor, too? I think he’s related to them.”

“Where do you even hear this stuff?”

“The halls talk.”

Katara raises her eyebrow before chuckling a little. “I’m glad I quit Divination already. Reading tea is bad enough, I would hate to suddenly have a new Professor. What happened to Fung?”

“He wanted to ‘find himself’,” Haru says in quotations. The three of them laugh at that for a moment before the lights dim even more and Gyatso makes his way to the front of the room. Katara reaches for a few more dishes, not wanting to clatter around the food while the room is silent for the Sorting.

The hat lies on a stool and Gyatso, in his strange orange getup and pointy hat, gives them all one of his crooked and yet strangely wise smiles. His white hair gives away his age but lets him look distinguished. A line of the other staff sit behind him, all familiar except for an old man at the end. He has a long white beard and a strange twinkle in his eye, along with a teapot steaming in front of him; rather strange, but he is the Divination professor. Pakku looks bored as ever while Zei is staring at his wand with a strange face. Piandao is twisting the knife in his hand and Jeong Jeong has his gaze drilled on the processions — oh, they’re here.

“I hope you’re all having a fine night,” Gyatso says with his traditional flourish. “The winter holidays will soon be approaching, so remember to check in with your Head of House if you’re planning on staying here! Ravenclaw is currently leading with the most points, Hufflepuff is a little behind them, and Gryffindor is dead last,” he’s met with boos from the table, and Katara leans back and smirks. “As it is, we have a few special guests today — Azula and Zuko Sozin, transfers from Durmstrang, will be joining us for the rest of the year in the fifth and seventh years! Please do help them fit in here as much as possible, as I know the Hogwarts community can be so welcoming!”

After a moment the whole room erupts into applause, but Katara keeps her hands on her knife and fork as she tries to see where the transfers —  _ Azula and Zuko —  _ are. Even their names sound rough and dark, all hard edges. 

The first person she sees is a girl her age who looks beautiful, if a little broken. It’s strange that that’s the first thought which comes to her mind but that’s truly what Katara thinks when she sees golden eyes and hair that looks like it’s usually well-taken care of. It’s smooth but cut in chunks, and there’s a strange dullness in her eyes, like they used to be fiery and now they’re  _ not.  _ She’s relatively tall and although her back is mostly straight, she’s pale and leaning up against the boy next to her. 

She does a double take at the boy next to her — well, more like a man, she thinks, he looks old for being a seventh year. But it’s not the strange look in his eyes or his tall frame which come to her attention; it’s the burn mark splayed across his face, across his left eye. It’s red and deep and looks relatively old. 

Light magic heals, and even the jinxes Toph loves so much can’t permanently hurt anyone. It’s only dark magic that leaves those kind of scars on people, magic which stays under the flesh permanently. Why would someone whose father led the New Phoenix Order have such a scar? He would have to be fighting, she realizes. The water-based potion she’s working on to heal dark magic, potent as she intends it to be, couldn’t come close to fixing that mark. She doesn’t think that she’d want to, anyway. Whoever this is —  _ Zuko —  _ clearly has a sordid past, and she doubts he was fighting  _ against  _ the conspiracy.

“That’s a piece of work,” Haru says with a wince, and Jin sighs and puts her hands back.

“Makes him look sort of dangerous. He’s cute.”

“Cute? Really?”

“Sure,” she shrugs. “I like a guy who can do well in a fight.”

Haru is looking at Jin through the corner of his eye and Katara wants to just shove them together but she can’t, so she digs into her potatoes and gravy and ignores the Headmaster’s words as he gives off some spiel about the hat. It doesn’t matter what Aang says — those two look like trouble, and although her prefect duties might mean showing Azula around she has a feeling the girl won’t be a Gryffindor.

She’s right. The hat sings out  _ Ravenclaw  _ the second it touches Azula’s head, and she’s expecting it to repeat or maybe say  _ Slytherin  _ on Zuko’s, but it stays silent. For a couple of minutes. After five pass she stops pretending that she isn’t paying attention and just stares at the boy. His eyes are closed together and his mouth is silently moving. 

After another three the entire hall is staring at him, holding in their breath. Azula has moved over to the Ravenclaw table, still looking a little lost, more so without her brother to guide her. She sits down next to Yue who gives her a bright smile and Ty Lee moves over from the Hufflepuff table to sit down to the other girl, eschewing formalities. Her girlfriends look over at Katara in a silent ask to join them and befriend the new girl, and she looks away for now. If they choose to add Azula to their little group she won’t complain, because she seems like more of a victim than anything else, but she doesn’t want to be that welcoming. It’s the boy who’s  _ still getting sorted  _ who she thinks might hold the darker genes. 

Gyatso seems to be moving toward Zuko but he’s held off with a frantic shake of his head. A second later, the hat speaks. “Gryffindor.”

Katara groans. Of course the strange boy who plays with dark magic would be a Gryffindor. The wizarding world has long grown past the idea that dark wizards belong in Slytherin — they just usually have the traits which characterize the house — so it doesn’t tell her much other than the fact that he must be somewhat courageous. Gryffindors are an amalgamation of the traits of the other houses with reckless abandon added in. Katara would have been a Ravenclaw had she not demanded Gryffindor from the hat, and Sokka might have been a Hufflepuff, or perhaps also a Ravenclaw; Toph, with her rough character, would definitely have been a Slytherin. 

He wanders to their table, heading toward the end where the seventh years all welcome him as much as they can, Sokka pounding him on the back a little, the inhibitions he had displayed in the morning suddenly leaving as he and Suki start talking to their new friend. Katara rolls her eyes at the display and goes back to her food. Something about Zuko just doesn’t feel right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh this is so self-indulgent -- thanks for reading! I might post the next chapter a bit early to introduce Zuko as a real character, but until I finish my other WIPs updates for this one might be a little far apart. Thanks for reading, and please leave me a comment if you're into this idea :). I have it mostly planned out and I'm so excited, even though, like, nobody saw it coming


	2. terrifying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Katara meet.

“Really, Sokka? Really?”

“Katara . . .”

“You know that I already don’t want to talk to this guy — I don’t even know how he’s a Gryffindor — but really?”

“Honestly, I think you’ll get along. He doesn’t talk much. He’ll just deal with your abuse —”

“Because he’s a dark wizard!”

“Did you  _ see  _ that scar? I’m sure that he’s not the biggest fan of dark magic. And besides, Suki and I haven’t had alone time in —”

“In literally five minutes, you guys are always together. Anyway, why can’t the sixth years do it?”

“I promised them they’d have today off . . .”

“Haru has chess club tonight, you’re insufferable, I can’t — oh.”

“Hey, Zuko!” Sokka says loudly, and Katara wants to crawl up into a ball and go back to her room and just . . .  _ sleep,  _ now, and not deal with this guy at all. But she’s a good sister at the end of the day. “This is my sister, Katara. She’s a bit mean but she’s the fifth year prefect and I’m really sorry that I can’t make it but she’ll be showing you around so have fun!”

He darts down the hall before either of them have a chance to object, jumping into the portrait after whispering the password. Katara sighs. She’s not going to try to make nice with this guy.

“I’m Zuko,” he holds out his hand.

“I know,” she says sarcastically, leaving him hanging and turning towards the door. “I’m Katara, clearly, and I guess I’m giving you your tour of Hogwarts tonight.”

“Oh, alright —”

She interrupts and starts walking towards the portrait. “This is the Painted Lady, you have to whisper a password to her and she lets you into our common room — the password right now is 

Sea Spirit.”

“Okay.”

“Come with me,” she gestures, and pulls him after her as she turns into the next hallway. “It’s only a couple of hours to curfew, even though yours is relatively late because you’re a seventh year, and they’ll be more lax with you as it is. We need to get through everything.”

She marches in front of him, refusing to look back at his face and see whether or not he’s acknowledging her. He’s probably realized by now that she isn’t going to wait for him to speak. The silence doesn’t get that awkward as she leads him down the staircase, through more and more carpeted and dull hallways, because the castle is full of life right now. Jin walks past with her friend Song and they both wave at Zuko. Katara frowns and moves on.

“This is the library,” she stops at the door — it’ll close in about an hour. The Hogwarts Library might just be her favorite part of the school, and she doesn’t technically need to show it to him but she leads him in anyways. The librarian (she’s been here for years and she still doesn't know what his name is) doesn’t look up as they enter. It’s relatively empty, with the winter holidays just around the corner and it being a Saturday night. Still, she smiles as she runs her hands over the mahogany seats. “You can come in whenever, but make sure not to take anything without checking it out or you’ll be in trouble.”

“Okay,” he shrugs, and his tone makes her feel like he’s mocking her, so she’s surprised when she looks back and sees that he’s reverently looking at the shelves, cataloging the titles like she does. It seems like something she should respect but she doesn’t want to like him at all so she ignores him and keeps walking forward.

“What’s . . . this?” he asks, and she focuses back more on the present and realizes that she’s stopped in the Restricted Section.  _ Oh, no.  _

“Nothing,” she says, and moves back a few steps back to the dim light which characterizes the rest of the library, but he stays stuck in place. She doesn’t want to say his name, so she ends up walking right back next to him. “We should go.”

He doesn’t move again and she’s debating whether or not she’d get cursed if she grabbed his arm when she notices the tome that’s caught his eye — well, the good eye, at least. It’s blood red with a black title, which is never a good combination, and so she’s not at all surprised when she leans in to see something awfully terrible.  _ Secrets of the Darkest Flame.  _

For being in a school the Hogwarts library does have some quite evil items, although they’re not meant for students as much as they are for the professionals and researchers who come through for their own purposes. Normally Katara wouldn’t be allowed in here at all, but Professor Pakku had given her a full pass at the beginning of the year to aid with her project. Apparently the pass was enough for the librarian to overlook her bringing Zuko in. She almost wishes that they’d been stopped.

“We’re not allowed to be here,” follows up after a moment of his staring. And then again after he doesn’t move. “Yes, it’s a dark book. You can break the rules and get it to do whatever on your own time.”

That garners a reaction from him. “I . . . why does Hogwarts even have a book like this?”

“I don’t know. Research purposes? Aren’t you used to this stuff?”

He reaches down to graze his hands over the title of the book. She’s about to stop him, but then she thinks about the amount of carnivorous and flat-out crazy books she’s seen down here. If she’s lucky it’ll eat him. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The book falls open in his waiting arms and he flips through in a rather detached way. She leans back to make sure nobody is looking at her bringing a new transfer into the Restricted Section for no reason, but the shelves are still empty. When she looks again he’s staring at a page with a flame drawn across it. “I . . .” he starts, before his voice fizzles out and he stays starstruck.

It doesn’t look relatively novel, just a picture of a fire and some formulas and a spell written in Latin in words much more complex than those she understands. “What’s the deal? Looking for more magic? Going to try to take over Hogwarts?” she snarks, and the minute after she says the words she knows that she shouldn’t have. He’s glaring at her like he’s trying to be angry but failing.

She’s ready for a fight, even reaches down for her wand inside of her robes, but after a few seconds he turns his eyes back onto the page, reading the runes like he can make sense of them. It makes her a little bit more mad, the casual way he ignores her, so she blasts out again. “Your father tried to take over the Ministry. You aren’t innocent here.”

“Ah,” he says. “So that’s why you don’t like me.”

“You’re  _ — you’re —”  _ she breathes out, “you’re bad news. You think we don’t know what they teach at Durmstrang? Dark magic, and you reek of it.”

A little closer to him she can feel it; not from just his scar, but from his entire being. She’s never been the best at sensing auras, at sensing  _ things  _ from people, that’s more of Toph’s wavelength, seemingly spurred on by her blindness. It’s strange, not the kind of evil she’s expecting but something intrinsically destructive, like a part of his very being. And along with it it’s  _ him,  _ and he smells like he’s burning in a strange way, that musk of cinders and ashes but also something deeper, like she’s put her nose deep into the middle of a fire but that’s just not  _ possible —  _

She’s a finger’s width apart from him, the book trapped somewhere between them, the hard end against her chest. The position is rather compromising and she would, had this been anyone else, (she remembers her small affair with Jet, a Slytherin who liked to ruffle her, with a frown) be thinking about his breath on her hair, but this is Zuko, and he’s new, and she’s definitely suspicious of him because he’s different.

“Bad news?” he questions, almost a teasing lilt to his voice. “You really think you know me.”

“I do.”

“I met you a few minutes ago and you’re already suspicious of me. I could call you a little paranoid.”

“I’m not like the others here. I don’t think people change that easily.”

She’s ignoring how close together they are. “And you think I was . . . what,  _ bad?  _ Do you even know who my father is?”

“It would probably prove my point.”

“Ozai,” he says and his lips twist in a crude imitation of a smile. She wants to choke. 

She’s heard of Ozai, heard of a crazed man, a radical who believed that all magic was for the taking, dark and light. Pain, suffering . . . her eyes look up to see the scar across his left side. Something sinks deep into her stomach. This is worse than she’d thought.

“Why are you here?” she ends up whispering. Ozai is defeated, she knows, the man himself is, but the powers he dabbled in aren’t, and the book digging into her chest suddenly scares her. She wants to jump back but he moves with her. 

He shrugs. “I took my sister and ran away from the past. He wasn’t exactly the best father.”

Not an answer. She thinks back. “Were you?”

“Was I . . .” he’s leaning in again. Her heart shouldn’t be beating like this. 

“Were you . . . bad?”

He should say no. That would be the smart thing, the sane thing to do — even if he was guilty, he should have said no. That would have been a lot less terrifying, the simple deliberation, then the way he’s staring at her. “I don’t like using words like good and bad. It’s just magic.”

_ No, it’s not just magic.  _ Her mother died in the Department of Mysteries, infected by an object which had sucked out her life force. “No, it’s good and bad. And that tells me everything I need to know about you,” she holds her ground. “Stay away from my family and friends. Something’s not right about you.”

Where’d the mild-mannered boy who’d introduced himself gone? There’s someone else looking at her, mutilated eye glaring and aura pulsing. Then all of a sudden the strange feeling he’d surrounded her with is gone, and the air seems  _ loose  _ again. She breathes out as he moves away, a brighter edge to his voice as he slides the book back in its place and moving away from the Restricted Section. A little bit relieved, she follows, maneuvering around him to leave him. She’s halfway out the door when he snorts. “Where are you going?”

“Back to my dorm,” she says, quickly turning to leave, but he catches her arm. She shrugs it off as fast as she can but he has her backed into the wall.

“Aren’t you supposed to be showing me around?”

“Find your own way around the castle.”

“You really want me to tell your Headmaster that you didn’t show me around?”

She’s about to just retort in the affirmative before realizing that would just get Sokka in trouble, and he really doesn’t need another black mark on his record. She sighs. “Fine. Just stay away and stay silent and then we don’t have to talk again after this. Ever again.”

“You sure about that? I’m starting to think I might become friends with your brother and his girlfriend . . .” it should sound nefarious, the way he’s talking, but it really just seems teasing. 

“Oh, just —  _ shush.” _

It’s a little later than she’d first planned, and they might not make it back in time for curfew. It doesn’t really matter, she’s friends with most of the professors — perks of your Potion’s teacher being your step-grandfather — and the groundskeepers, Li and Lo, and relatively innocuous. As she turns down towards the greenhouses, glowing at the end of dusk, she asks him the question that’s been on her mind. “What house did the hat want to put you on?”

“Am I allowed to talk?”

She turns her head up and sniffs, even if he can’t really see. “Yes.”

“How do you know it was deliberating at all?”

She has to turn back and give him an incredulous look. “Why else would it take so long? And Gryffindors always take long — though never  _ that  _ long. It takes courage to be a Gryffindor, more than usual, and you can have that along with the traits of the other houses.”

“Interesting. It had a strange conversation with me.”

“You probably terrified it,” she says and then winces. But he laughs.

“No, I don’t think that was it. I don’t know much about these houses so it gave me descriptions while it was on my head, perhaps that’s why it took so long.”

“It sorted your sister immediately.”

“Clever Ravenclaws — clever is really the best word to fit Azula. I’m a little bit more multifaceted.”

“It wanted to place you in Slytherin, didn’t it?” She shouldn’t be continuing this but her curiosity gets the better of her.

“Ambition, cunning? I think at first, but then it went to Ravenclaw. It took a few minutes to decide.”

She scuffs her foot on the ground, shivering. They’re officially outside now, a light dusting of snow on the ground, and even though she’s cold he doesn’t seem bothered by the temperature at all — although he’s wearing less than her. Something here really doesn’t add up. 

“And yet you ended up in Gryffindor.”

“It was an annoying hat. I told it to put me wherever the people who want to burn it alive go, and then it just ended up yelling Gryffindor.”

“Oh.”

Why is she talking to him, again? “These are the greenhouses. They have plants.”

“Never would have guessed,” he deadpans, and she sighs.  _ Have to give him that one.  _ “Can we go inside them?”

“No.”

He walks closer to the small glass houses lined out in front of them. The sun has almost completely set by now, but she can still see most of the plants within. Mandrakes are twisting and curling inside, but besides that the area is devoid of life — of course, most sane people aren’t going to look at plants during winter.

“Why not?”

“Why do you want to?”

He frowns and looks almost pitiful. She’s so confused by him. “They’re alive.”

“What does that mean? They’re full of  _ plants.  _ Half of them are murderous.”

“Oh . . .”

She sighs and throws her hands up. The sound gets his attention and he looks back at her from where he’s bent next to a bunch of green bushes inside the building, looking at them through the glass. “We’re going in. I’ll take you to the Astronomy Tower and we can walk through the upper floors of the castle and that’s it. We’re done.”

“Okay,” he says quietly, and she wants to scream again. Does he have two personalities? This was not the man who told her that he didn’t believe in dark and light magic in the restricted section. This is someone else. And neither of them are trustworthy. She just huffs and walks back, hearing him step on the snow with a telltale crunch. He slams the door behind her when they go up and she tenses at the sound, even though she’s heard it a thousand times before. She is definitely on edge.

It’s late, now. The vast majority of students they cross are going back to bed. Luckily, she doesn’t run into Jin and Song mooning over Zuko again, although a triad of Slytherin second-years side-eye him and giggle. She glares as they walk past even though she shouldn’t and tells them to go to bed.

By the time they’re up to the sixth floor, having jumped on multiple staircases, she’s panting a little bit. She has stamina even if she doesn’t play quidditch, but it isn’t innately there and she grows angry with herself as he easily surpasses her up to the top. His singular eyebrow is narrowed again — that scar is definitely a piece of work — but it straightens out as his lip twitches and he holds out a hand to her as she reaches the top. She keeps a glare on her face and ignores him, climbing to the floor a minute later. 

“Are you always this angry?”

“Are you always this evil?”

“Look. I’m not evil, alright? That word is just . . .”

“See! That . . .” she struggles, “that right there! Evil means evil! It isn’t complicated. Just like good and bad aren’t complicated. You can’t say that they’re not.”

“You’re still hung up on that?”

“I — you are  _ unbelievable!” _

“Uh, no. I think I’m very believable. I’m right here.”

“Don’t try to change the subject with . . . whatever. You’ve done dark magic.”

He pauses and she stops to observe them both in the empty hallway. With his threat hanging over her heads she marches on, feet pounding through the hall, echoing. The crimson curtains, the dark walls with hanging portraits — she’s been here alone and with others before at this time of night, but she is a little scared. “Well, are you going to admit it?”

He looks like he’s struggling. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Oh, wow!” She almost shouts, turning back at him with a visage she knows looks slightly insane. “You couldn’t help doing dark magic!”

“Katara, I swear, it’s not my fault —”

“And  _ that  _ erases your responsibility.”

Some part of her mind screams  _ danger, danger, danger, you’re in a dark corridor and the only person around you is a dark wizard you should leave,  _ but she’s a Gryffindor and she holds her ground. Even though she’s scared. That strange look is back on his face and she suddenly feels clammy, like the hall has turned humid. 

“You’re close-minded.”

“W—what? I’m not close-minded, I think something is  _ wrong  _ if you’ve done dark magic, because it’s  _ inherently bad,  _ it’s in the  _ name —” _

“You wouldn’t understand. You’ve been —”

“What is  _ wrong  _ with you? Why are you here? You — you need to leave. Hogwarts isn’t for people like you.”

He stops and stares, looking right into her, piercingly. “I deserve to be here as much as you do,” he hisses. “Nothing is wrong with me, you’re just on your high horse —”

They’re at the Astronomy Tower and it’s late at night and she really shouldn’t leave him alone because he’s new but she doesn’t care anymore. She doesn’t hear the trailing end of his sentence as she runs down the corridor, away from the boy with the scar and the spark in his eyes, as fast as her legs can take her. 

__

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katara is such a Gryffindor. Does Zuko seem weird? Yes. That's because he is. Also, reasons.


End file.
